


all I need is the air I breathe (and a place to rest my head)

by ProwlingThunder



Series: The Everlasting List of Shenanigans [214]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 04:54:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14742357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: He didn't have to investigatewho.He'd always know who. There wasn't anyone else in the world like her.





	all I need is the air I breathe (and a place to rest my head)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FinalFantasyXVNut](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FinalFantasyXVNut/gifts).



He wakes to crowding darkness and forgets; for a moment, he is nowhere and does not exist, hanging in some existential crisis between heartbeats. It was thick and cloying, and he knew if he moved, he would reach out and touch cool metal and frosted glass. A storage tank, a coffin, where he belonged, just like Ardyn had said. He'd known, in some part of his mind, that he'd end up back in one. (Again.)

Rationality came back slowly, chasing the heels of analytical thinking. Panic abated, leaving room for his other senses to replace what the reptilian brain had insisted was there.

Here, the softness of a mattress beneath his skin. Storage tanks had the bare minimum of padding in order to prevent pressure ware and scratches. There were no blankets to ward off the bite of cool air, nothing even so much as the sheet tangled around his thighs. They began to curve just off set of the shoulders and closed not far from his nose, good, solid construction that didn't leave them much room to jostle and prevented light from breaking inside. But light glowed from beyond the thick curtains of the apartment, never thick enough to cast the room into true darkness.

 _There's not room for two,_ his brain provided helpfully, as his eyesight adjusted to the dimness, sense-of-location and sound telling him there was another in the bed with him. He didn't have to investigate _who._ He'd always know who. There wasn't anyone else in the world like her. (A sharp contrast to himself. Mass-produced, barcode marking off his serial line, one of hundreds of thousands--)

He reached out to touch her, gentle, caressing her skin. Here was the knitting of pale keratin, the scar of a voretooth a sharp contrast to softer beige flesh. Black hair spilled around her skull like strands of fine silk, the dark halo of a night-time angel. His fingers itched to get a picture; in sleep, she looked so _peaceful._ Like nothing could touch her, like there was nothing in the world that could get to her at all. Nothing bothered here. The world was perfect.

It wasn't though. Still... on nights like this, waking up next to her and knowing that there was no way at all anyone could _fake_ this-- knowing where he was because he was laying next to her...

Maria wasn't like anyone else in the world, and he'd been damned lucky to meet her.


End file.
